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Digital Library Innovator and now Science Fiction Author
Dr. Martin Halbert is a pioneering leader in digital preservation and research services with three decades of experience including serving as Dean of Libraries at two major research universities, principal investigator on the seminal National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) and the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database projects, and former science advisor for Public Access of the U.S. National Science Foundation. His experiences as an information scientist and librarian have informed his perspectives as an expert in preserving access to public records and scientific research outputs.
Drawing on this background in leading and fostering public access to critically important cultural and historical information, Dr. Halbert has now written the first two books of the Sojourner Saga, a new series of upmarket science fiction novels that explore the ultimate price of information control and the fragility of civilization in a vast galactic setting of human, alien, and cybernetic societies. These novels, Helmsman (Book One), and Pilgrim (Book Two) will both be published in March, 2026 by Eposian Publishing, an innovative new press focusing on new approaches to narrative.
Selected Accomplishments
The central conflicts of the Sojourner Saga are drawn from Dr. Halbert's three decades of professional exploration of the highest level issues in information governance. The following selected accomplishments illustrate the types of real-world policy failures, ethical battles, and institutional neglect that inspired his novels distant future setting and its themes concerning the battle for control over information and freedom.
Transatlantic Slave Trade Database (Co-PI)
As co-principal investigator for the original 2005-2010 project that created the renowned Transatlantic Slave Trade Database portal, Dr. Halbert had direct experience in working with historians to create digital information services and resources that shine a light on the darkest human behaviors of the past. The database and portal are the primary information resource for scholars undertaking research concerning the history of slave trafficking between the new world and the old. In the Sojourner Saga, slavery in the future is more oppressive than ever with the aid of cybernetic control systems implanted in human minds.
National Digital Information Preservation Program (PI)
As the leader of one of the six foundational projects comprising the U.S. National Digital Information Preservation Program (NDIIPP) from 2004-2009, Dr. Halbert was a pioneer of digital preservation strategies at the national level. Digital information loss is a pervasive problem in preserving cultural and historical information for humankind in the future. The central protagonists of the Sojourner Saga are members of an interstellar monastic order dedicated to preserving and sharing information for devastated human societies called the Bereft.